


even when we're ghosts

by writergirl8



Series: 30 Minute Fics [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Post-6x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 14:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12367542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: “I really missed you,” Stiles says as the sun comes up.(It’s been exactly one sunrise since Lydia had stolen him back from the underworld, and she still feels a little bit like he’s going to get taken away from her again.)





	even when we're ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> This is unedited and, as the title of the series might suggest, I wrote it in thirty minutes. 
> 
> This is just something I'm doing for myself to keep myself sane. I need to write some Stydia in between papers, readings, and studying, so please take this random plotless garbage that I didn't even know the direction of as I wrote down the first line. 
> 
> Title from Say You Won't Let Go by James Arthur because I'm hoping to trigger itsalwayslydia if she ever accidentally stumbles upon my fic.

"I really missed you," Stiles says as the sun comes up.

It's been exactly one sunrise since Lydia had stolen him back from the underworld, and she still feels a little bit like he's going to get taken away from her again. Even now, while his fingers are strumming steadily against the top of her hand, Lydia feels the desperate need to memorize the beat.

"You missed me," she repeats, tossing the words around to see how they feel in her mouth. "You missed me."

He sits up a little higher, his elbow against his jeep's hood as he looks down at her.

"Are you surprised?" asks Stiles, seeming bemused at the idea that Lydia would expect him not to miss her.

She turns towards the sky that casts pink upon Stiles' sharp cheekbones and quietly, in her mind, thanks the colors for touching his skin. Thanks the sun for warming him. Thanks air for never failing him, for always being enough, so that they could end up on the hood of his jeep at six o'clock in the morning after a night of no sleep.

"I never knew for sure."

The pain in her voice is so evident that Stiles seems startled. He blinks twice, in rapid succession. They haven't kissed again. They haven't had sex. A year ago, that would have been the first thing Lydia did when she got her hands on him. But it's different now. They're different. Both of them.

"That I liked you?" he fills in.

"That…" She trails off, turning back to the open, neverending morning sky. It stretches on for eternity, and although Lydia doesn't believe in forever, she believes in the sky. She believes in Stiles, too. She can't help it. "You would be sitting across from me. At lunch. In class. You'd be fidgeting, or scratching your cheek, or playing the drums with your pen, and I'd think to myself… that I missed you. Because looking at you, for the past year, I didn't know who I was looking at. And it made me afraid of you."

"I never wanted you to be sc—" Stiles' voice is rough with guilt and self-loathing, but Lydia doesn't let him finish his sentence.

"Not that you'd hurt me," she says, softly admonishing him. "I was just so frightened of the idea that the you I was looking at didn't like me anymore. That you put up with me because of the pack. That only you snuck into my room at night with tea because I was the crazy banshee girl who had a nose for the supernatural. I was afraid that I was the only one who looked forward to getting out of bed at three in the morning because it meant that I got to be alone with you."

"Lydia." He shudders out her name, too shocked to say anything else.

"I was afraid of the fact that you felt like my best friend despite the fact that I was never certain of which you I was talking to."

That had been the hardest part. She doesn't know how to tell him that there are two Stiles' in her head, and one of them she's completely, irrevocably in love with. The other one terrifies her, because he still holds her heart in the palm of his hand, but instead of wanting it, he crushes it carelessly. And part of the reason she had fallen in love with Stiles in the first place is because he had always been so, so careful with her. Not because she was delicate. But because he simply  _wanted_ to be.

It's beautiful. It's as beautiful as the pink of the sunrise splashing across the bridge of his nose.

"It took me a really long time to figure out what kept me sane in the train station." It seems like a non sequitur, but she knows it isn't. Feels it in her toes, the tips of her fingers, by the skin of her teeth. It's just another way, in a thousand, that Stiles has told her he loves her. "At first I thought about how to get out, to get back to you guys. Then, when that wasn't enough, I thought about the other people there with me, the ones who also had families to get back to. And then that hurt too much, so I started to think about… about what I would do if the roles were reversed. If you got sent down here and, somehow, I couldn't remember you." He stops speaking for a moment, and from the way his throat is bobbing, Lydia thinks he might be trying not to cry. She understands. It's fresh like the unhealed nick of a razor blade. She doesn't quite know what it will take to clot it. "I would sit there and mull over all these moments we had together, and think about what might trigger me into remembering them. Would I see the gym and think about dancing with you? Would I see the yarn in my bedroom and remember all the shit we figured out together? And those were all really nice, romantic ideas, but I kinda think I would've just been empty. Every hallway I walked down at school would remind me of you without me knowing who you were. I think I would've felt… hollow."

"Yeah. I get that."

Her reply is quiet. It's thoughtful. It blends in with the colors in the sky and clatters around her ribcage, beating against her chest like it's something violent. It's  _nerve wracking_ to finally be honest with Stiles after holding him close to her chest for so long. She thinks it's taken them too long to get here, but at the same time, she never would have been prepared for someone caring about her as much as Stiles cares about her. When he looks at her now, his affection lands on her like it's something heavy that he's placed into her hands. He looks at her like it hurts him not to. He looks at her like  _that_ hurts too.

"I don't even know who I would be if I didn't love you, Lydia. I couldn't even  _picture_ who I would be if you weren't in my memories. But I think… I think that maybe the best parts of me are the parts that came out of loving you."

But she doesn't deserve that— doesn't deserve  _him_ , either. She is selfish. She is cowardly. She is judgemental. She looks for acceptance in all the wrong places.

His hand slides into hers, and when Lydia breathes in, his sunlight fills her lungs.

She is selfless. She is brave. She is caring. She looks for acceptance in his eyes and the uptick of his mouth and the slide of his tongue against his bottom lip.

"Stiles," says Lydia, her heart aching. "The best parts of me are the parts that came out of loving you, too."


End file.
